Widerstand
6th December 2010, 17:06
A specter is haunting Europe since US-economist Richard Florida calculated that only those cities in which the “Creative Class” feels at home prosper. “Cities without gays and rock bands are losing the economic development race”, Florida writes. Today, many European Metropolises compete as settling grounds for this “Creative Class”. In Hamburg, competition of locations has by now lead to increasing subordination of urban politics under the “Image City.” The point is to create a specific image of city: That of a “pulsating Metropolis”, offering “a stimulating environment and best chances for cultural creators of all shades.” A municipally owned marketing agency makes sure that “Brand Hamburg” reaches the media. The republic is drowned in brochures styling Hamburg as a homogeneous, socially pacified utopia with Elbphilharmonie and table dancers, Blankenese and Schanze, agency life and arts scene. Harley-Days at the Kiez, gay parades in St. Georg, off-site art spectacles at Hafencity, Reeperbahn festival, fan miles and Cruising Days: Not one week without tourist megaevents with “brandstrengthening function.”
Dear location politicians: We refuse talking about this city in terms of marketing. We say: Ouch, it hurts. Stop this shit. We don’t buy it. We neither want to help “positioning” the Kiez as a “colorful, bold, versatile district”, nor do we think of Hamburg as “Water, Openness, Internationality” or whatever else makes a “key to success of brand Hamburg.” We attach different memories. Over one million square meters empty office space, while you keep building premium glass teeth around the Elbe. We take note that the west inner city is virtually devoid of shared flat rooms under 45o euro, devoid of apartments under 10 euro per square meter. That the number of social housing will half within the next ten years. That the poor, the old and immigrated residents move to the outer city, because Hartz IV and municipal apartment policies make it so. We believe: Your “growing city” is really the segregated city of the 19th century: Promenades for the moneyed, outer kamienicas for the mob.
Therefore we don’t support “brand Hamburg’s” advertising crusade. Not that you’d had asked us anyway. To the contrary: We didn’t oversee that the continuously decreasing culture-political subsidies for free, artistic work today are increasingly distributed according to city political criteria. Point in case - Wilhemsburg, Neue Große Bergstraße, Hafencity: Artists are expected to run after financial and temporary-use offers like donkeys after carrots – to wherever development areas need vitalization, to wherever Investors or new, more solvent residents need to be attracted. You obviously take for granted that cultural resources are used “consciously for urban development” and “for the city image.” Culture is to be the ornament of turbo-gentrification, because you’re too impatient for the usual, year-long Trockenwohn-process. How you envision the city looking after is well observable in St. Pauli and the Schanzenviertel: Former working class , then trendy neighborhoods, are in short time transformed into exclusive housing areas with connected party- and shopping-Kiez, milked by franchise gastronomy and chains like H&M.
Hamburg’s cultural politic is since long part of your eventization-strategy. Thirty million euro were payed to a reactionary collector’s military museum. More than forty percent of current expenditures go to the Ellbphilharmonie. The department of culture is taken hostage by a 500-million-euro-grave, which will at best be a luxurious playground for megastars of the international classic and jazz touring circus, once completed. Not to mention that the Elbphilharmonie’s symbolism leaves out no social cynicism: The city constructs a “lighthouse project” offering a five-star hotel and 47 exclusive condos for the moneyed, but can’t grant the commons more than a windy observation platform. What a landmark!
Meanwhile we in the “growing city” find it increasingly difficult renting payable ateliers, studios or rehearsal rooms, and running clubs or venues not solely dictated by profit motives. We are therefore convinced: An urban politic letting the department of finances decide what happens to city soil has no right to talk about “pulsating scenes.” Wherever a inner city site can be turned into money, wherever a park can be cluttered, wherever a green area can give way to an estate, wherever a gap can be closed, there the department of finances drops it on the property market – highest bidder wins, minimal licensing requirements and orders. What sprouts is an investor-city in steel and concrete, stripped of all culture.
We did well understand: We, the Music-, DJ-, Arts-, Theatre- and Film-folks, the cool-small-shop-owners, the different-attitude-to-life-heralds are to be the counterpoint to the “city of basement garages” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). We are to create an atmosphere, aura and pastime value without which a modern urban location can’t compete globally. We are welcome. Somehow. On one hand. On the other hand does the total enhancement of urban space make us – the pioneers – migrate in masses because there is less and less affordable space that can be played on. By now, dear location politicians, you have taken note that this conflicts with your plans. But your solutions tragically don’t take one tiny step outside the logic of a corporate city. Freshly printed senate papers announce to “develop future potentials of creative business through strengthening its competitive capability.” A “creative agency” shall from now on be “contact point for the mediation of property offers”, amongst other things. Whoever can’t afford the rents has to relabel themselves as “artistic new blood” and beg the creative agency for “temporary usage of vacancy.” Even subsidies are granted, but only if “urgency of need and relevancy for the creative location Hamburg” are given. It couldn’t be said clearer what “creativity” means in this context: A profit center for the “growing city.”
And we aren’t in for this. In fact we don’t want strategically planned “creative estates” and “creative yards.” We come from squats, stinking rehearsal room bunkers, we had clubs in wet basements and in empty shopping malls, our ateliers were in abandoned administrative sites and we preferred damaged to renovated old buildings because the rent was cheaper. We always searched places in this city that had temporarily dropped out of the market – because there, we could be free, we could be autonomous, we could be independent. We don’t want to help revaluing them now. We don’t want to answer the question “How do you want to live?” at urban development workshops. To us, what we do in this city is always a matter of Free Spaces, of Counterdrafts, of Utopias, of the subversion of the logics of exploitation and location-competition.
We say: A city ain’t no brand. A city ain’t no company. A city is public property. We ask the social question, which is in modern cities also a question of territorial struggles. It is a question of conquering and defending places, that enhance life in this city for those not part of the “growing city’s” target group. We take our Right To The City – along all residents of Hamburg refusing to be a location factor. We are in solidarity with those squatting the Gängeviertel, with the Frappant initiative opposing the Ikea in Altona, with the Centro Sociale and the Rote Flora, with the initiatives against the destruction of green space along the Isebek-Kanal and the planned Moorburg-Trasse in Altona, with No-BNQ in St. Pauli, with the Actionnetwork Against Gentrification and many other initiatives from Wilhemsburg to St. Georg opposing the city of investors.
http://buxtehudebrennt.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/not-in-our-name-brand-hamburg/
Dear location politicians: We refuse talking about this city in terms of marketing. We say: Ouch, it hurts. Stop this shit. We don’t buy it. We neither want to help “positioning” the Kiez as a “colorful, bold, versatile district”, nor do we think of Hamburg as “Water, Openness, Internationality” or whatever else makes a “key to success of brand Hamburg.” We attach different memories. Over one million square meters empty office space, while you keep building premium glass teeth around the Elbe. We take note that the west inner city is virtually devoid of shared flat rooms under 45o euro, devoid of apartments under 10 euro per square meter. That the number of social housing will half within the next ten years. That the poor, the old and immigrated residents move to the outer city, because Hartz IV and municipal apartment policies make it so. We believe: Your “growing city” is really the segregated city of the 19th century: Promenades for the moneyed, outer kamienicas for the mob.
Therefore we don’t support “brand Hamburg’s” advertising crusade. Not that you’d had asked us anyway. To the contrary: We didn’t oversee that the continuously decreasing culture-political subsidies for free, artistic work today are increasingly distributed according to city political criteria. Point in case - Wilhemsburg, Neue Große Bergstraße, Hafencity: Artists are expected to run after financial and temporary-use offers like donkeys after carrots – to wherever development areas need vitalization, to wherever Investors or new, more solvent residents need to be attracted. You obviously take for granted that cultural resources are used “consciously for urban development” and “for the city image.” Culture is to be the ornament of turbo-gentrification, because you’re too impatient for the usual, year-long Trockenwohn-process. How you envision the city looking after is well observable in St. Pauli and the Schanzenviertel: Former working class , then trendy neighborhoods, are in short time transformed into exclusive housing areas with connected party- and shopping-Kiez, milked by franchise gastronomy and chains like H&M.
Hamburg’s cultural politic is since long part of your eventization-strategy. Thirty million euro were payed to a reactionary collector’s military museum. More than forty percent of current expenditures go to the Ellbphilharmonie. The department of culture is taken hostage by a 500-million-euro-grave, which will at best be a luxurious playground for megastars of the international classic and jazz touring circus, once completed. Not to mention that the Elbphilharmonie’s symbolism leaves out no social cynicism: The city constructs a “lighthouse project” offering a five-star hotel and 47 exclusive condos for the moneyed, but can’t grant the commons more than a windy observation platform. What a landmark!
Meanwhile we in the “growing city” find it increasingly difficult renting payable ateliers, studios or rehearsal rooms, and running clubs or venues not solely dictated by profit motives. We are therefore convinced: An urban politic letting the department of finances decide what happens to city soil has no right to talk about “pulsating scenes.” Wherever a inner city site can be turned into money, wherever a park can be cluttered, wherever a green area can give way to an estate, wherever a gap can be closed, there the department of finances drops it on the property market – highest bidder wins, minimal licensing requirements and orders. What sprouts is an investor-city in steel and concrete, stripped of all culture.
We did well understand: We, the Music-, DJ-, Arts-, Theatre- and Film-folks, the cool-small-shop-owners, the different-attitude-to-life-heralds are to be the counterpoint to the “city of basement garages” (Süddeutsche Zeitung). We are to create an atmosphere, aura and pastime value without which a modern urban location can’t compete globally. We are welcome. Somehow. On one hand. On the other hand does the total enhancement of urban space make us – the pioneers – migrate in masses because there is less and less affordable space that can be played on. By now, dear location politicians, you have taken note that this conflicts with your plans. But your solutions tragically don’t take one tiny step outside the logic of a corporate city. Freshly printed senate papers announce to “develop future potentials of creative business through strengthening its competitive capability.” A “creative agency” shall from now on be “contact point for the mediation of property offers”, amongst other things. Whoever can’t afford the rents has to relabel themselves as “artistic new blood” and beg the creative agency for “temporary usage of vacancy.” Even subsidies are granted, but only if “urgency of need and relevancy for the creative location Hamburg” are given. It couldn’t be said clearer what “creativity” means in this context: A profit center for the “growing city.”
And we aren’t in for this. In fact we don’t want strategically planned “creative estates” and “creative yards.” We come from squats, stinking rehearsal room bunkers, we had clubs in wet basements and in empty shopping malls, our ateliers were in abandoned administrative sites and we preferred damaged to renovated old buildings because the rent was cheaper. We always searched places in this city that had temporarily dropped out of the market – because there, we could be free, we could be autonomous, we could be independent. We don’t want to help revaluing them now. We don’t want to answer the question “How do you want to live?” at urban development workshops. To us, what we do in this city is always a matter of Free Spaces, of Counterdrafts, of Utopias, of the subversion of the logics of exploitation and location-competition.
We say: A city ain’t no brand. A city ain’t no company. A city is public property. We ask the social question, which is in modern cities also a question of territorial struggles. It is a question of conquering and defending places, that enhance life in this city for those not part of the “growing city’s” target group. We take our Right To The City – along all residents of Hamburg refusing to be a location factor. We are in solidarity with those squatting the Gängeviertel, with the Frappant initiative opposing the Ikea in Altona, with the Centro Sociale and the Rote Flora, with the initiatives against the destruction of green space along the Isebek-Kanal and the planned Moorburg-Trasse in Altona, with No-BNQ in St. Pauli, with the Actionnetwork Against Gentrification and many other initiatives from Wilhemsburg to St. Georg opposing the city of investors.
http://buxtehudebrennt.wordpress.com/2010/12/06/not-in-our-name-brand-hamburg/